The company claimed that the Alienware gaming laptop series will provide gamers the next level in gaming evolution. One of them will be the Alienware M17x R4 which features a powerful new chipset, advanced graphics options and an optional 3D screen for an immersive gaming experience. The following are the specs and performance overview of this gaming notebook for your own guide or consideration.
Design, Display and Dimension
At the first glance, Alienware M17x R4 comes with the modern retro styling that may grab anyone’s attention. Uniquely, you can change the colors on the backlit keyboard, touchpad, power button along with the notable Alienware logo below the display. The screen itself measures 17.3 inches with the native resolution of 1920x1080p (widescreen). You will notice that the viewing angles are pretty good since 3 people can comfortably watch the gaming activity on the display. Also, it has the excellent display brightness of 282 lux which is above the average (the average is 248 lux). But on the other hand, its glossy display is very reflective and it can be very annoying for the outdoor use. Measuring 16.1 x 11.9 x 1.75-inches and weighing about 9.8 pounds, this is basically not the most compact gaming notebook in the market.
General Performance
To boost the overall performance, this powerful gaming laptop has been equipped with the third-generation 2.6-GHz Intel Core i7-3720QM CPU, 8GB of RAM, 500 GB hard drive (7200 RPM) with a 32GB mSATA SSD and Blu-ray player/DVD burner combo drive for playing DVDs and Blu-ray movies. Having this spec, this notebook can be considered as one of the premium gaming laptop in the market. Towards the operating system, this laptop has been pre-installed with the Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit version). With the NVidia GeForce GTX 680M (2GB of VRAM) along with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 as the second graphics card, this laptop will provide the almost flawless gaming experience such as the smooth animations and the realistic visual appearances.
Connectivity
This laptop comes with a quite complete connectivity features which include wired Gigabit Ethernet and dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, 4 USB 3.0 ports, eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, audio ports (S/PDIF mini jack), VGA port, HDMI-in port, HDMI-out port for monitors and HDTVs, mini display port jack for monitors and the 9-in-1 media card reader.
Battery Life
This laptop has the battery type of 90 Whr (watt hours) that will last for more than 5 hours when it’s used for the continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi. As a matter of fact, that's 1 hour and 43 minutes longer than the average. The laptop also lasts for a total of 4 hours and 12 minutes when it’s used for downloading images and web browsing. When it’s used for continuous music streaming, the occasional video, and plenty of writing, the device lasted for 3 hours and 36 minutes.
Price, Pros and Cons
The price range of Alienware M17x R4 is around $2600. The pros of this gaming notebook are the large and bright 1080p display, powerful performance and graphics, great audio, HDMI-in port, Blu-ray drive, solid build quality and full-size keyboard with numeric keypad and attractive lighting effects. On the downsides, this machine is heavy and its screen is highly reflective. Also, it has the expensive price and you may experience that the bottom of the machine may run warm when playing games. [IS]
